Illegal How America's lawless immigration regime threatens us all

Elizabeth F. Cohen, 1973-

Book - 2020

"In Illegal, prominent political scientist Elizabeth Cohen explores the dark history of US immigration policy and proposes a major new plan for full-scale reform. As Cohen shows, the US has always maintained the right to exclude people from entry--from those deemed to have seditious intent to a broad category of "undesirables," which has at times included epileptics, prostitutes, beggars, and anarchists. Cohen traces the particular invention of "illegal" immigration to 1882, when the Chinese Exclusion Act was enacted to suppress immigration by "undesirable" peoples of the world. Later, through the 1924 National Origins Quota Act, Congress massively expanded the scope of racial immigrant exclusions. However..., as Cohen points out, the Registry Act of 1929 quietly provided a way for people who had come to the US without legal status to eventually become legal and to naturalize. In subsequent decades, Congress began to distinguish legal from illegal immigration by mapping out the first roads to citizenry. Yet when the registry system was eventually undone in 1986 with the introduction of selective "amnesty" for documented immigrants, the problem of "the undocumented" snowballed into a legal and economic disaster. Employers kept hiring undocumented workers, incentivizing immigration, but a lack of papers could place migrant families in legal limbo. Thus, by 1996, we had a citizenship crisis -- one exacerbated when terrorism became linked with unlawful immigration, manufactured by a Congress that had allowed its citizenship-related functions to atrophy"--

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Subjects
Genres
History
Published
New York : Basic Books 2020.
Language
English
Main Author
Elizabeth F. Cohen, 1973- (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
vii, 261 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 209-248) and index.
ISBN
9781541699847
  • Introduction
  • 1. Enforcement Gone Rogue
  • 2. Constitutionally Unshackled
  • 3. Inventing Illegality
  • 4. Enforcing the Border
  • 5. Two Steps Forward
  • 6. Two Steps Back
  • 7. Nervous Breakdown
  • Conclusion: Where Do We Go from Here?
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Index
Review by Choice Review

Cohen (Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse Univ.) provides a masterful examination of how white nationalists and nativists shaped and informed the evolution of US immigration policy, and in so doing broke the immigration system. In chapter 1, "Enforcement Gone Rogue," Cohen describes how two agencies--Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)--have flouted the law; amassed enormous budgets and power, with little oversight or accountability; and trampled on the civil rights of citizens with aggressive and brutal enforcement activities. Subsequent chapters look at the legislative history of immigration laws, including the National Origins Act, the Registry Act of 1929, and the 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration and Nationality Act, the last of which remains the framework for today's immigration system. In the concluding chapter, the author makes three recommendations for bringing about positive change in how the US deals with immigration and citizenship and treats immigrants as future citizens: specifically, updating the registry system, decriminalizing the immigration process, and reorganizing the immigration agency. Throughout Cohen drives home the point that the US's present out-of-control immigration enforcement regime, fueled by nativist sentiments, is eroding the rights of both citizens of the US and noncitizens and undermining democracy. Engaging, well documented, and accessible, this book is a must read. Summing Up: Essential. All readers. --Irasema Coronado, Arizona State University

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Syracuse University political science professor Cohen (The Political Value of Time) indicts the "racist nativism" that drives the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws in this searing polemic. Arguing that the Trump administration's "Muslim ban" and family separation policy are nothing new in the history of political efforts to protect America's white majority, Cohen references the 1924 National Origins Act, which effectively stopped immigration from all countries outside of northern Europe, and the emergence in the 1980s of well-funded, ultraconservative organizations that sought to convince the public that immigrants were "likely to be criminals, terrorists, and freeloaders." Cohen debunks such claims ("overall, violent-crime rates decline as immigration rises") and convincingly demonstrates that federal agencies enforcing immigration laws operate without sufficient oversight and hold detainees under "subhuman" conditions in facilities where physical and sexual assault are prevalent. Her suggested reforms include repealing laws that mandate the detention of undocumented immigrants, creating a path to citizenship for those who have lived and worked in the country for years, and reorganizing enforcement agencies to rein in their abuses. Cohen draws on a wealth of historical evidence to present her dire portrait of America's immigration system, and her commonsense solutions feel both necessary and attainable. Progressive readers will heed this trenchant call to action. (Jan.)

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A political scientist offers a concise but unflinching look at the barbaric state of immigration in America and a few ideas, possibly viable under the right conditions, to make things decent again.Most readers understand that the immigration system in the United States is deeply flawed, a state exemplified most vividly by news reports of children in cages at the southern border. Cohen (Political Science/Syracuse Univ.; The Political Value of Time: Citizenship, Duration, and Democratic Justice, 2018, etc.) takes a close look at the players: Customs and Border Patrol, the relatively new Department of Homeland Security, and, most importantly, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which was founded in 2003 and functions with near impunity when it comes to immigration issues. This is a nicely succinct portrait of one of the most pressing issues of the day, and Cohen is openly cautionary in her approach. "If ICE and CBP are allowed to continue on their current path," she writes, "we are only a short leap to a time when any citizen could hear a knock on their door and encounter uniformed officers on the other side who are ready to take their property and possibly their family into the custody of the US government. Or perhaps the government will look the other way as a private militia group targets us." The author is a sharp examiner of the relevant data and research, and she is shrewd enough not to drown in the political quicksand surrounding immigration. However, she doesn't shy away from controversy, exploring the dangers of white nationalism and taking into account the pragmatic reasons to formulate a fair immigration policy that doesn't prostrate itself before communal fear. Cohen never ignores the fact that cruelty is often the point of many of the country's current immigration policies, and she shows how it's an issue "that affects not just immigrants but anyone in this country."An even-keeled examination. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.